Some reading required

Stories of Lore 5

 

 

Behold for it is I, the cosmic force of all things. Its a week heavy with roster updates and we find ourselves in an odd position I didn’t quite think through. Namely in that the clans are so small it makes no sense to have your advisor actually introduce these people. So instead you get me introducing them instead. This also comes not only with the battle causing some turnover of heroes, but also because I have now used certain characters enough times in stories that fuck it they’re a character now, just gonna do one big batch.

Koamalu is known for being the quiet shaman of the beastkin. He is often found lurking around and maintains a rather dignified and serious atmosphere about himself. He is one of the most powerful shamans in the clan though does not reveal such too easily. Generally only the chiefs would know just how capable he really is.

With Hakenu’e away for a little while to bury Kinich, he has appointed Koamalu to take over for him while he is away. Indicating that quite likely, Koamalu is considered second in command over the beastkin clan. Though some members of the Nezatl are particularly suspicious of him, so little is really known about him that it makes them uncomfortable that he’s the second in command. They feel it is a bad omen for a dark shadowy figure with a sparsely known life story to be in such a position.

 

One of the Huanacan’s original five guardians. Uyitzan towers over others at roughly nine feet tall, one of the monsters that might have a party of adventurers sent to take him down. His anatomy makes him a powerful substitute for cavalry, though he does have some stamina issues. His weapons have to be specially made by Sawiri to match his size. He is generally a rather noble creature for what many call a monster. If left to his own devices he can be found roaming around the village occupying himself with heavy lifting as needed or sparring with Iiniwa.

 

 

A former Chanai, before all this fire business, who was ‘exiled’ for being ‘too aggressive’ for Chanai diplomatic policy. She murdered a lot of people and they completely failed to catch her after pronouncing her punishment basically. Eventually becoming recruited by The Dozen.

While she appears to be the only member to operate by herself, she is in fact two people. They are twins who pose as a single person, one always remaining out of sight, to give themselves a constant advantage over others. She can do seemingly impossible things or can be spectacularly lucky at odd times purely because no one knows the other sister is nearby. She is The Dozen’s “stealthy” choice. Both sisters can disappear if needed, and find their way into places they should not be. She primarily functions as a hunter when nothing is going on, her companion hawk helping her quite a bit in that regard. When needed, she is The Dozen’s chosen assassin. Though problematically, she lacks a certain amount of punch. So some targets can simply overpower her even if she sneaks up on them.

After fighting alongside the coalition, Silas wound up taking on the invitation from The Dozen to come hang out with them upon distinguishing himself as the greatest of the demon warriors. While he still needs more training, his demonic strengths speak to great potential. The isolated demons had little combat experience, so their ‘greatest warrior’ is just a well of untapped potential. At least he has a natural instinct for battle. After carrying out the final mission of Avonaco and Ragash, he came to Auwana to join formerly. He still doesn’t have a partner, but recruitment is rough these days.

Despite his horrific visage, he is surprisingly upbeat and easy to talk to. Lately his efforts are focused on training to get him up to par with the rest of The Dozen.

A veteran of The Dozen and one of its founding few members, back before they had enough people to even settle on that name. He is a former member of the Witch Doctors, after being sent as a sacrificial healer to try and tend to his clan mates during a plague he opted for other ideas and fucked off. He learned magic that allows him to keep his condition under control and has blessed him with incredible stamina and tools to help him on long travels.

He is one of the two members known as “The Travelers” and is regarded as one of the most revered members for his veterancy and effectiveness. Though he and his partner are both terribly boring in conversation. The pair are fully capable of dismantling entire villages that are not properly prepared to come under their attention. Though his greatest talent is, as his team’s name implies, traveling. He can cross long distances in a fraction of the time of any other, find his way into hard to reach places that might take an adventurer with more tools to access, and is always wandering about somewhere in search of nothing in particular. He just walks a lot.

Partner of The Leper is The Other, who is similarly very quiet and not fun to talk to. It is suspected they got their name when they proved too difficult to get much conversation out of and were partnered with The Leper purely for their mutual love of not talking. The Other is a former Chanai who travels with a wolf companion. Having come into Exile from the Chanai by way of walking off and never being heard from again for no discernible reason. They bear similar strange abilities to The Leper to walk very long distances surprisingly quickly. It isn’t entirely known if The Other can do this on their own or if The Leper is helping them accomplish this. Either way, The Other is always found wandering with The Leper. Despite how little the two talk to anyone else, even each other, they do seem to appreciate each other’s partnership and are very difficult to find separated from one another.

The other helps their travels with their handy wolf companion to track whatever they need with its keen nose. Since the wolf is dominated it acts with the intelligence of its master rather than that of a beast. Allowing The other to make full use of it’s keen senses. While both members of The Travelers are proficient warriors as all members must be, it is not their strong suit. They are more methodical and strategic, only fighting when necessary if they can help it. The Dozen turns to them to act as scouts or siege other villages. The warriors like Avonaco tend to be left to the grunt work of fighting.

One of Alihana’s apprentices and the most distinguished of the Hariwana at the battle (except the two pre-existing heroes who revealed they were masterminds preparing for a day such as this for the last several years). Rohaka is an umbramancy specialist and is known for being the reason the magic census said ‘turn shadows into eldritch horrors’. While she has definite limitations on how much she can do this and for how long, a limit that she pushed herself to the edge of in mere seconds at the battle, it is still an impressive ability with a lot of impact. She is nearly impossible to beat in one on up to six combat without serious knowledge of what she can do or a similarly impressive level of power. She also has the ability to disappear into shadows and has been able to get up and down Auwana by hopping out of the island’s shadow across the ground. Unfortunately, she can only take herself. Also unfortunately, I didn’t write this character fully until just now so that never came up before. So Shaddup mezzy and take the shadow mage while you got it.

Typically she is around Alihana’s workshop and lives right next door to her teacher, she is considered rather anti social since everyone thinks she is a legitimate ghost haunting the earth due to her pale skin that came about from spending too long in the shade and bleeding shadows when she over exerts herself. Other Hariwana aren’t so off-put by her appearance so she just stays in her comfort zone around her family. The exception to this being Kaya. She also likes to skip rocks on the lake. Once when Ka’oana jumped out of the lake to try and scare people, she managed to scare him when he thought he found some spirit of the river come to haunt him. They mutually screamed. Kaya could not stop laughing that day.

 

Alright that’s it, cosmic force out.

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The chief has undertaken a journey to give Kinich a proper burial in his homeland. Until he returns, I have been appointed to take his place.

Our people are still working their way up, unfortunately with Sawiri occupied at the battle he has been unable to work with the bones from storm collecting to create any other manner of travel. Though those necessary for day to day activities have been sent up first along with the wounded.

The losses while significant should not affect us too adversely. If anything, we now have a reliable surplus of food and can work towards stockpiling for winter. Mor informs me the jungles will likely also have more food we can scavenge easily, so that concern is considered addressed. I have arranged a mourning service for those lost in the battle to take place once we manage to bring everyone back up onto the island.

More of the orcs have come to join us, while their numbers are still small we now have all of the orcs that remain from the original clan with us. I have postponed organizing their position with our tribe until Hakenu’e returns to decide what to do with them in regards to their status among the council of chiefs. You may wish to bring up your thoughts on the matter before he makes a decision.

We will need to decide what to take from this battle as our prize from the coalition. I will leave what to do with any that remain with the demon clan to decide, since it is they who will still be living on the plains after we have left.

I have discerned that the elf Tehanau is an “Akoa” elf from the western jungles. Her interest in our war was mostly self serving out of caution. She had learned from the ashen elves that the Chanai were a growing threat, and that soon we would be arriving in their jungle. She took action from there to protect herself and her clan. Their interest in their own cousins seems to be one of mild distaste even if they accepted them as refugees.

That is all for now, you may return to your individual affairs. If necessary, I am available to answer any questions though do keep in mind Hakenu’e will return soon. The Nezatl were unaffected by the battle and are still available to act as judgement presiding over the various matters at hand as well.

We still don’t have honey Xoco, if you ask every day it won’t make our efforts come about even a day sooner. You know this…why do I even bother.

 

Anyways… we’re working on some of the ceremonial crafts for the whole mourning thing they have planned for everyone that died.

Legally speaking the tribe as a whole hasn’t really taken an official stance on slavery, and Mor’s telling us to go take slaves. I think Chants is also interested in such things, So…we may want to get an official overall ruling on this. I know we discussed it before, but no one really laid down a vote or decreed a law. Obviously the clan is against it given half of them are rescued slaves. I don’t really know how the Huanacan feel about it, they’re off in the woods and their chief was away at the war. We have discussed the pros and cons of this before with Hakenu’e but again no official vote or declaration really got made. We…seem to do that a lot.

Also! Treatment of prisoners was on the table as well alongside this debate, given Mor is just throwing people off the edge to test stuff on them. That line might already be a little bit crossed though. However, you never know what they and Alihana might come up with to do to people.

While the final decision rests with Hakenu’e, you’re in a unique position as leader of the ‘judgement’ clan to make some sort of point about the orc clan and their position with our tribe as a whole. Some would argue their numbers, and the fact that they were kind of kidnapped but not really, don’t really make a strong case for them joining the council of chiefs with the founders but on the other hand they could also just make more orcs at this point and save us some transition in the future. Oh crap you’re in a unique position to do anything, I better go find Nenetl.

We’re back, miss us? While the jig is up with the ‘catch’ on the bone weapons, we’re heading out of here anyways. At least it got some use before we left. Though I must say, I will miss the plains. We spent generations here…also I’m only well known here. I am going to have to hex so many people to get the point across from here on out I suspect. Oh well.

Anyways, Sawiri is back at home in a giant pit of bones we harvested and is swimming around in them like some sort of very greedy duck. Though it is a lot of bones and the orcs are perhaps a bit nervous regarding us upon realizing just what we’re up to. Also, we don’t even have them all up here. Each person we bring back up onto the island carries a few up here. We have those both from the battlefield and the storm hunt. So…we’re still sorting through those. Fortunately, many of them are very conveniently sized for us to work on that bone armor project you wanted. Once we make sure they’re not the important ones for other projects at least. I have our apprentices helping sort them out, at least once Sawiri is done swimming around in them.

As for normalizing tribal mobility, I’m not entirely sure how to just…do that. That might be more of a Nezatl job. I have an ongoing project with Koamalu though if that counts? We’re experimenting with a perhaps less messed up version of the ritual that caused me to curse myself.

In regards to the orcs, I’ve come to notice that we and the dozen are the main clans that make them nervous despite the fact that all the real efforts to bring them here have been our two clans. I feel like they might be prone to particular judgements, it’s not like we have a giant pile of corpses laying around and threatened to kill them if they didn’t comply….okay maybe first impressions aren’t our strong suit. We’ll keep working on that. At least the shaman seems to be mildly okay with you by comparison.

 

Everything…and I mean everything…is sore. I think Coszacatl is a puddle right now too. I hope the humans appreciate our efforts. Uyitzan is injured but he should bounce back soon enough, it takes a lot to bring him down for good.

We haven’t really been able to lay out much plan regarding the basilisk in all this commotion, I mean…you were with us and all. If we want to introduce scarcity to his territory, I suppose we could start a fire on his side of the mountain too and hope he doesn’t realize it was us?

Zeltzin is back with us, at least Silas came to keep her company and maybe teach her a thing or two about demons. She actually got back before the battle even started, war is no place for her.

In the meantime, Kennae is still off somewhere gathering whatever he can while hanging around the western outpost which we’ll be passing over soon. The lift will be busy for the forseaable future as we try to bring everything up in terms of both supplies and people. It looks like its becoming time to prepare for our next adventure, as we can’t launch much else while trying to get everyone back up while Sawiri is busy doing his research still.

We’ve picked up some recruits from what remained of Kinich’s forces now that the war is over and they don’t have anywhere else to really go. The plains are still starving after all, though hopefully the fall of the Chanai will alleviate that for some. So at least we can replace some of our members.

I’m not sure if we should just have them move into the homes of the gone to save time or build them new places so they don’t wind up living in a dead person’s house…what would we even do with the old huts at that point?

 

Alright I’m back from operating in your stead mister broken legs. We lost two groups overall, including Ragash. Avonaco might be alive but we have reason to believe he was taken by the crows.

As for your comment about Alihana’s state of dress…well as we have learned there was a specific advantage to that. Since anyone who stabbed her would apparently just kill themselves. We may want to double check how many of our own weapons were made by Sawiri though.

At least the home front never came under attack. The storm kept the Chanai grounded and their flying beasts were just locked away in their pens by the time we invaded their main village.

We brought back a great deal of trophies, though Sawiri is currently looking through them to see what might be of use to him. Those present decided to recruit Silas the demon to come back with us, if you wanted to do anything with him while he’s settling in. While Sawiri was mostly interested in bones, we brought back the hides and some meat as well. Though a lot of it still has to make its way up with the basket, that is going to be quite an affair to bring everything up here until Sawiri finds any more convenient ideas.

Meanwhile, I’ve received report from The Travelers and Sakazai about their journey into the jungle. The Travelers were rather to the point, though Sakazai’s report definitely has more complaints about itchy plants, giant bugs, and nearly being eaten on several occasions.

In regards to the orc shaman, I have made your stance on the matter clear. Perhaps with some level of persuasion. He has agreed to at least teach it to Hakenu’e. Though I’m not sure how much of an improvement that is, Hakenu’e is also quite old after all. Though the orc is wary of Koamalu so he isn’t so keen to teach it to just any of the beastkin. He is also extremely wary of Alihana, and makes deliberate effort to avoid her.

Maybe we could convince some of the Nezatl to try and learn from him, most of them aren’t doing anything important anyways.

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